Friday, December 31, 2010

Stories of addiction have been a part of many powerful films over the years and it seems like every year that passes more films dealing with the subject emerge. Addiction touches every family in America in one way or another and it is a disease that most people fail to truly understand its complex nature. Films are a solid vehicle to express some of the messages of addiction and recovery; some films are even darker, but accurate all the same, portraying a character that never gets better and dies because of their disease. Hollywood is not always the most accurate in the depiction of real life struggles, often because the people making the film are not addicts themselves, so they are forced to go off of what they have seen or heard about addiction.

All the way back to 1945, with "The Lost Weekend", people have been watching films that have dealt with addiction in a real way and in many ways stories of pain and suffering, as well as triumph have captivated viewers. This month there are four films coming out that all deal with addiction:

"Barney’s Version"

"Forever"

"Another Year"

"Blue Valentine"

Also this year we had:

"You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"

“All Good Things"

“Solitary Man”

People seem to be drawn to movies about alcoholism and drug addiction because they fail to understand the nature of the disease and feel like Hollywood may shed some light. While some films have done better than others it is a hard subject to tackle on a number of fronts, films these days that deal with addiction generally don't have happy endings which could lead some people to believe that there is no hope. Fortunately, that is the farthest from the truth, there is always hope and what everyone loses from addiction they can get back if they are willing to surrender and work towards recovery.